BBC

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In The Times today, Liberal Conspiracy's Sunny Hundal lays into the BBC over its refusal to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee's humanitarian appeal for Gaza:

The truth is that the BBC has become afraid of its own shadow. It has become so cowed by accusations of anti-Israeli bias that it has become unsure of what impartiality even means. It has become so cowed by sniping from the Right that it has lost conviction in the integrity of its own journalism. The anti-BBC brigade in the press and politics will use any excuse to undermine the corporation. And to assauge those critics, the corporation has sacrificed its own understanding of impartiality. 

A number of bloggers have recalled an episode from 2005 as evidence of spinelessness in the BBC's recent coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Only days after the Scottish Government announced its plans for a local income tax, it seems another confontation with Westminster is looming. The Sunday Herald brings us news that the report of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, due to be released on Monday, will call for a new terrestrial TV service:

The stand-alone Scottish digital television channel envisaged by the commission would be based in Scotland and could resemble the new publicly funded Gaelic broadcasting channel.

The commission's near year-long inquiry also involved bosses from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 explaining how they could better cater for Scottish needs. The switchover to digital television is expected to be completed by 2012, so the new channel could be implemented within four years.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Three things struck me about last night's Question Time where David Davis was the main panellist.

The BBC despise him and what he has done. I am not saying that a memo went out, but a corporate view was formed, instantly and deeply, that he needs to be banished to the outreaches of purgatory. I first sensed this munching a sandwich and listening to the World At One, when Martha Kearney asked a BBC researcher whether the opinion polls showing 65 - 69 per cent support for 42 Days might be as a result of asking the wrong, or at least a loaded, question. No, said the voice of the Corporation's research department, public opinion is overwhelmingly on side of 42 days - and, he implied, unshakably so.

The BBC now seems to feel it has a vested interest in keeping it this way. Its fundamental charter that justifies its license fee is its duty to inform, educate and entertain. It does the first and the third all right. But does it educate? What if DD manages to take the issue of principle behind 42 days - that people should not be subject to arbitrary detention - to the public and in so doing moves public support of 42 days from 69 to, say, 49 per cent? He can only achieve this by education - by a three-week teach-in and genuine debate of the issues. If he can do that, won't it show up a lamentable feebleness of the Corporation and its failure to fulfil its mandate?

Vron Ware (London, author): On the Monday following the end of BBC2's White season it was announced that Rupert Murdoch's new printing plant in Hertfordshire was to be opened with great ceremony. Much was made of the fact that it was now the biggest newspaper production site in the world, and it was only mentioned as a footnote that it made Wapping redundant, cutting the workforce from 600 to 200. The real news was that the print media was still alive and well.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just able to reflect on interview with Alex Salmond towards the close of this morning Today programme. While Iain Dale went away thinking about life in the Tory shadow cabinet as Cameron creates a hostage to fortune, I can't shake off the echoes of Scotland's first minister being interviewed about his New Year's message by Sarah Montague. He was patronised from the opening "good morning to you". He delightfully wrong-footed the BBC whose poll information on "outright" independence was as out of date as their information on what he actually said. But it was the tone, the "do we have to interview him again, can he really matter?" which he patiently dealt with, wisely refusing to go on about when Brown last talked with him on the phone as, unable to expose him as unimportant, Montague tried to stir up a personal fight and make it all about personalities. Unlike the interview with Cameron  it struck me there was no respect for a serious leader, who is, after all, in office.

Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): With a tin ear and no television in my life, I walked into the BBCist crowd assembled for the 50th birthday of "Today" the morning radio news-show (a bit like NPR's "Morning Edition", or the French "Les Matin de France Culture") knowing there would be neither familiar faces nor voices around me. Until John Humphrys, who has been presenting the show for most of my adult life, took to the microphone, again. Here is a voice that has woken me up more often than my wife or daughters, who has come in and out of my morning dreams. It is the archetypal voice of the ordinary Englishman - pragmatic, impatient of obfuscation, a little enamoured of pomp.

Tony Curzon Price (London, openDemocracy): So, ConservativeHome has discovered that the typical BBC employee who also has a profile on facebook has "liberal" political views - they out-number conservatives by 11-1 in the BBC, versus 2-1 in the country and 3-1 in London.There are lots of flaws in the conclusion that this means there is an anti-Tory bias in the BBC. Listing yourself as "liberal-minded" won't stop you from voting Conservative, for example. In fact, much of Cameron's repositioning can be thought of as making sure that more such self-describers consider the Conservatives an acceptable vote.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The episode of the Queen and the BBC, two of the defining institutions of Britishness, has a ghastly importance. The Queen is simply the empty signifier of a descent into Murdoch land. Perhaps because they have been creating an internal market with outsourced production companies, the BBC commissioned a film on the Queen made by RDF. The film makers seem to have got bored and manufactured the Queen "storming out" of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz by reversing a sequence so that her walking in is shown as her walking out. According to the official report, the "fuse was inexcusably lit when RDF edited the footage of the Queen in a cavalier fashion". Hold on a second, can lying be described as just being "cavalier"? We are also told, however, that no one "set out to misrepresent the Queen". In which case was the story true? On Newsnight, the BBC's Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thompson said that there was a "failure to recognise how sensitive it is", which implied that if it hadn't been the Queen it would have been OK. The Controller of BBC 1 was obliged the resign, because he had boasted about the scoop in presenting a trailer of the film to the press, telling them it shows the monarch "losing it a bit and walking out in a huff". When he was told what he had said was a load of cobblers he just hoped it would all blow over - or, as they put it in their pompous way, he was "slow to appreciate the magnitude and import of the mistake".

Tony Curzon Price (London, oD): Did anyone else notice it? The "electricity" word, whispered by an unidentified outsider, to Cabinet minister John Hutton, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, as he was being grilled on nuclear power by John Humphrys on this morning's Today program.

The minister made a tiny slip: he said that nuclear accounts for "a small" 18% of our energy consumption --- actually, and this is irrelevant, 18% is pretty huge. Someone in the background of the minister, no doubt a nerdish civil servant or political aid, unable to contain his professional rectitude, blurted out "electricity", and the minister corrected himself, "yes, electricity, not energy". Nuclear is 18% of our electricity production, but electricity is only about 1/3 of our energy consumption, so nuclear is only about 6% of our energy consumption.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Cameron is in real trouble with today's Telegraph poll showing that Brown would double Labour's majority an election tomorrow. As Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov, who did the polling, said on the World at One, this is no mere bounce, if that implies Tory support will be back on top the day after tomorrow: "something fundamental" has changed.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The 'why it matters' debate is already taking on different strands. One is about democracy itself, see the passionate post from Stephen Taylor below. Another is the Dog and Duck question about how to communicate it to people who have been deprived of constitutional and democratic language by our royalist culture (see Tony Blair). A third, is how the media itself reports the issues. All are taken up in the post by Guy Lodge and now Gavin Yates and my comments on it. But Benedict Brogan of the Mail in his lively blog makes a very strong point about the Today programme following the one I blogged. He says they refused to cover Brown's constitutional agenda because it was 'yesterday's story'. In other words, they punished the government for not announcing their intentions on the Today programme first, before parliament. Apparently it is not their job to be mere reporters of the news, they have to be the makers of the story.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Last night I commented on Brown's speech for The World Tonight on Radio 4. The programme also featured a lively debate between Michael Connarty and Boris Johnson on the West Lothian question. Listen to it here.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just listened to the Today programme discussion about this afternoon’s statement on the constitution: Lord Baker, Martin Bell and Helena Kennedy with Sarah Montague at the wheel. Apart from the welcome fact that none of them seemed to know what is going to be announced, it was dreadful. At a Smith Institute seminar in May Vernon Bogdanor argued that constitutional reforms have so far merely distributed power within and between the elite. I don’t agree completely, for example, I have been able to vote for a Mayor for London for the first time. But I sure saw his point this morning. Of course, parliamentary committees and what the second chamber does are vital to the proper functioning of the system. But this kind of change is not going to restore “faith” in politics as Montague put it at the start - a revealing phrase, as the last thing anyone wants is a return to a pious religious attitude towards our leaders. She then continued with the Today programme line that the constitution is boring and of no interest to people in “The Dog and Duck”. Helena tried to say something about the ‘non-constitutional’ language people are forced to use to talk about these matters, and at the end made an effort to drag the idea of a constitutional convention into the discussion, to little avail.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): As Tony Blair got into the car to drive to the Palace to resign, Cherie Blair accompanied him and got into the car on the far-side which meant the door nearest the camera, and as she did so, looked over to the massed ranks of the press and media and said, "Goodbye. I don't think we'll miss you".You can see the link from Nick Robinson's blog, he is the BBC's senior political editor. His reaction to Cherie's remark was, "Extraordinary", and then he continues, "Gob-smackingly spine-chillingly hair-raisingly extraordinary".

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Blair’s speech on the media (opens pdf document) follows what is now a classic set of moves.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): One theme of our present government is the revulsion of the people from politics. The media has something to do with this, but what? Is it just the honest messenger reporting the hollowness and hypocrisy of those who seek power - shot at by those who don't want the truth to be known? Or is the media a distorting lens exercising a dishonest influence, pillorying those it grips in its stocks, and by doing so giving its own self the power its scorns the politicians for seeking? This evening the main BBC 10 o’clock news definitely fell into the second category. Nick Robinson interviewed back-from-holiday David Cameron about the revolt over his Grammar Schools policy. You can see the full interview on the BBC website. Cameron defends his approach under hard questioning. We can judge what we think for ourselves. But on the TV the interview was cut back and broken up into little pieces as episodes within the framework of a relentless and elaborate cartoon send-up of Cameron trying to change his policies. It was a demeaning, dumbing-down and (sorry about the ‘d’s) dishonest. It wasn’t news and its effect, apart from being a party-political broadcast for the government, was to utterly trivialise politics as such. It seems that the BBC website has better judgement and has not reproduced it. Perhaps it will find its way to YouTube so you can see what I mean.